Chapter 287: Danger Zone. (Patreon)

[Edward POV]

The SATs ended at 12:15 in the afternoon. After submitting the last paper, we were finally released from the classroom. Some had frowns on their faces, while others were happy. 

Me? You might think that I would be smiling, but as soon as I heard the cacophony of shouts from the paparazzi and the fans, the good feeling I had from nailing the exam was crushed by a giant wave of anxiousness in my heart.

“EDWARDDDD~~~~~!!!!!!!!!”

“Mr. Newgate! A question, please!”

“EDWARD!! DID YOU BREAK UP WITH TAYLOR!”

To give them some credit, they were silent during the SAT process. I didn’t even notice the large crowd of people until after it ended.

Mrs. Henderson walked past me with the exam papers in her hand. I looked toward her and said, “Do you need any help?”

“A student should never get their hands on these, so no,” Mrs. Henderson replied while carrying a heavy box. I shrugged and said, “What if he’s not a student?”

“Then I guess he can,” Mrs. Henderson said, stopping her walk. “Randall,” I called into the empty space in front of me, and my manager appeared from out of the bushes. “Help her,” I ordered him.

Randall hesitated and said, “Edward, this time you might not come out unscathed. I should be with you to minimize the risk—”

I waved him off dismissively and replied, “Mickey is enough for that. Also, don’t forget where I am right now. I have a lot of backups here.”

Turning to Mrs. Henderson again, I asked, “You’re going to give me a present for Christmas, right?”

Taken aback, Mrs. Henderson replied in confusion, “Why should I?”

“Being the woman who has known me my entire life, it’s kind of your obligation. I’ll wait for the present,” I said cheekily. She gave a helpless smile, and I snapped my fingers at Randall. He begrudgingly picked up the box from Mrs. Henderson and took a deep breath to say something.

But before Randall could say anything else, my backups arrived. “ATTENTION! READY! SET! HUTTT!!!!”

The entire football team, clad in their game uniforms and armor, marched two by two to where I was standing. The uncanny sight was captured by the paparazzi, with flashes of light falling on them.

They created a circular perimeter around me. Jacob and Kyle pushed up the guards of their helmets, and Kyle said, “The cavalry's here!”

Jacob added, “We thought you might need us to escort you out of school.”

“My initial plan was to hire an actual tank, but I guess I can make do with you guys,” I chuckled teasingly. The team snickered at my comment.

As Randall escorted Mrs. Henderson back to the faculty room, he asked her in a friendly manner, “You’re the woman who has known Edward the longest?”

“I was his homeroom teacher throughout middle school, so I guess I am compared to the other women—except for his family,” Mrs. Henderson replied with a poker face.

Randall exclaimed in realization, “Ah, that makes sense.”

The cheerleaders snapped some pictures of the team circle, and basically the entirety of the student body, even the faculty members, stopped what they were doing and became spectators.

“Ah, also, if we’re breaking out of here, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” I said to the team. They looked confused. “What do you want to do?” Jacob asked.

I smirked and explained the situation to them. Ten minutes later, Mickey drove my Ford Dodge convertible, but I was sitting on the car hood with a microphone in my hand. The car bonnet was open, revealing large speakers inside.

Mickey sweat heavily from the anxiety. For the first time since he was promoted to be my head of security, he felt a sense of regret for jumping on the opportunity. He pressed the gas pedal without entering the gear, making the car engine roar. 

“My soldiers! We’re breaking through the front gate!” I shouted to the football team, who were protecting the car and boosting its morale. The entire school cheered for the 'Dolphins,' and the guards opened the metal gate that was blocking the crowd from entering the school.

“Everyone! Hi! Thank you for showing me your support while I was facing the exam! I think I did pretty well,” I waved to them while speaking into the microphone. The sound reached the entire crowd, and everyone could hear my words.

The speaker drowned out the paparazzi's questions, and the football players formed a protective barrier around me, making it impossible for anyone to get close. They could only shout their questions from afar. Some even tried to insult me to gain my attention, but I ignored them all.

My fans were elated to see me; the tween girls squealed and let out hysterical screams when they laid their eyes on me. Suddenly, as the car—moving very slowly—began to penetrate the crowd, music started playing.

“Everyone! Sing it with me!” I said casually as I sat cross-legged on the car hood. It felt like I was at a concert, and some people recognized the song.

“I can’t see.” Mickey was sweating heavily as he drove through the crowd. “You’re doing well, Mickey, just an inch at a time,” I whispered to encourage him.

[A Thousand Miles – Vanessa Carlton]

A meter into the human barricade, I started singing, “♫♪ Makin' my way downtown, Walkin' fast, faces pass, And I'm homebound ♫♪”

The football team struggled to hold back their laughter while focusing on keeping the people from breaching their defenses. The police, present for some reason, also helped clear the way as we started breaking free. That’s when I spotted a familiar face.

Detective Chloe Decker was there. From the looks of it, she was doing grunt work for the uniformed officers, likely punished by her captain for something again. Or maybe it was because I spoke up for her before, and he was being petty. Who knows?

“♫♪ Starin' blankly ahead, Just makin' my way, Makin' a way through the crowd ♫♪”

The unusual and historic scene for the entertainment industry was being recorded by numerous people, whether it was on Instagram Live or a video on YouTube, being uploaded as it happened.

With a slight shake of my head, I sang the best part, imitating a scene from the movie White Chicks. “And I need you ♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪, And I miss you, ♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪, And now I wonder~~”

“♫♪ If I could fall into the sky, Do you think time would pass me by? 'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles, If I could just see you~~, tonight ♫♪”

Finally, I managed to penetrate the crowd just as the last notes of the song faded away. I turned and waved goodbye to everyone. With one last glance at the sea of cheering faces, I jumped back toward my seat, feeling the adrenaline rush.

Mickey pressed the gas pedal, and the car surged forward, accelerating us out of the school area. The roar of the engine drowned out the chaos behind us as fans and paparazzi scrambled to chase after us.

“Thank you guys for your help!” I shouted to my teammates. They waved at me as the crowd finally gave up trying to chase the car.

“Damn, that was fucking crazy!” Mickey exclaimed, his anger giving way to relief as we escaped the situation. I laughed out loud and said, “Get used to it. That will happen a lot.”

“This is just a hypothetical question, but can I get demoted back to where I used to be?” he asked carefully.

I smirked evilly and replied, “Hypothetically? Never in a million years. Of course, hypothetically, I could fire you, and you could, hypothetically, try out for your past position again, although I wouldn’t hypothetically hire you back.”

“Lucky for me, it was just a hypothetical situation,” Mickey replied with a cunning smile.

My Twitter and Instagram notifications were going crazy as I drove back to the company building. A lot of people were tagging me in the breakout video, and it was trending on all social media.

“I should buy Twitter too,” I muttered to myself. Mickey was shocked and turned to me with disbelief, but then he accepted the thought, knowing I had the capability to do that.

RDJ quoted a link to the event posted by my fan club and asked, “@Edward Newgate, what event prompted this?”

I replied simply, “@OfficialRDJ Terry Crews, White Chicks. Also, I'm a Vanessa Carlton fan.”

Twitter didn’t have the capability to upload videos yet at the time, but on Instagram, my reply made the Terry Crews A Thousand Miles clip from White Chicks go viral again.

Vanessa Carlton and Terry Crews also quoted my reply without adding any comments. Terry just shared a shocked emoji with his tweet.

Some news outlets even covered the incident. With my song release in the morning and the current events happening in the afternoon, the media couldn’t get enough of me.

There was a crowd of paparazzi outside the company building, too. After I changed and settled a few things there, I drove out to continue the movie filming at a nearby park.

Pepper and Harvey were already there. Pepper smacked my bicep with his paper fan and scolded me, “You’re insane, aren’t you? How could you do such a thing? It’s really dangerous! What if you fall or, worse, get mauled by those savages? We would have to postpone your movie!”

He was mad that I didn’t sneak out of the school as usual. There were plenty of ways I could have done that—jumping the side gate, using the back gate, sneaking out in disguise, calling in the SUV cavalry, or even a helicopter ride away—but I chose the most direct way out of there.

“Ow, those savages are my fans,” I winced in pain, even though it didn’t hurt, and defended my fans. “They’ll come here soon. They can sniff your scent. We’re going to see if we can do this in a more private area,” Harvey explained to me.

I unbuttoned my jacket and said, “It’ll take longer. Are you sure about this? Usually, fans won’t interfere with filming, will they?”

Harvey nodded and replied, “They usually don’t. But—”

“Then it’s fine. We can do this,” I said with a coy smile. Pepper frowned and smacked me again. “Listen when people are worried about you.”

“Ow! One day of filming being postponed will cost us $500,000. Are you sure you want to postpone it?”

Pepper was startled. “Wait. Really?!”

“He’s lying,” Harvey chuckled as she watched Pepper’s naive reaction. “But we will still lose some money. Not $500,000, but still… People need to eat.”

“We’ll continue the filming!” Pepper decided quickly. Harvey and I snickered together before I got into character and went to film the scene for the movie. 

There would be several scenes to be shot here—one on the lake involving boats, and another scene where I would be in disguise, watching RG and EB to ensure they were dating properly as per my agreement with them.

We shot the scenes until sunset. I even forgot to eat lunch due to the tight schedule. However, I was pleased to say that we had almost enough scenes for the trailer. We still needed one more scene, which was set to be filmed at the climax of the movie—two weeks later—before the trailer would be released just before New Year’s.

By then, we would have nearly everything required for the movie, except for the scenes that needed CGI. I hoped we could finish filming before Christmas because I wanted to give my crew a holiday break. 

If we couldn’t wrap things up before Christmas, they would have to continue without me after New Year’s, which would disrupt the production schedule since I would be in Japan for my world tour after the holiday.

“I really hope there won’t be any complications.” I muttered with some helplessness as I waved at the fans crowding the filming area. They didn’t breach the barricade, regardless, their presence made the filming become much harder.

…

“I am so tired,” I exclaimed as I entered my seaside villa at 2 a.m. The filming ended at 10:30, but a long discussion with Paige and the director made me get home this late.

As I took off my shoes, Robin’s hologram appeared in front of me. “Your guest has left.”

We don’t wear shoes inside the house, but we do wear indoor slippers.

“I know,” I said, then asked, “Is there anything to eat?”

“Your grandmother has set aside some food for you in the fridge,” Robin replied. “She’s worried about you and wanted to know why she came out to California if you weren’t going to spend time with her. ”

“She’s complaining, Robin. She doesn’t really want to know about that. It’s just Grandmother’s guilt-tripping methods. Make a folder,” I explained with an intrigued smile.

Robin's hologram blushed and said, “Got it, Sir. Your grandparents will be leaving tomorrow. Should I schedule some time for you to give them a proper send-off?”

I nodded. “Yeah, do that. Otherwise, I won’t hear the end of it. Ah, Christmas. Did Grandma say anything about that?”

Robin replied, “She declined your invitation to come here because she wanted a white Christmas. There isn’t any snow in California, so she asked you to come to Wisconsin.”

“There's usually a snowstorm there around that time. Once, my dad, my birth giver, and I were stuck at the airport for 26 hours because of a snowstorm. We almost missed Christmas. Hmm, I have a lot to do. Maybe my dad and I will just celebrate here this year.”

“Your grandmother will be angry,” Robin replied with a fearful expression. She finally captured the emotion well, hugging her body and giving a slight shiver. After dismantling the robot I found underneath Greendale Community College, I upgraded Robin with an emotion sensor system created by Russell Borchert. 

He used the device to play with his nipple and share the intoxicated feeling with his robot, Raquel, in an attempt that I could only hypothesize as making love with her– it. I saw the potential to upgrade Robin so she could recognize human emotions.

Robin used a scanner to analyze brain synapses to identify feelings. It made her even more human than Sheldon, however, there were a few disadvantages.  

Once, when I was online trying to find something to ‘release’ my pent-up state, Robin realized that my brain synapses were going haywire and blocked all the related websites in the house. I couldn’t even explain to her what I was doing because of the embarrassment, so she’s still blocking them to this day.

As I was taking out some food from the fridge, Amy and Maggie walked groggily out of their room and approached me. Maggie yawned, her long red hair disheveled. She was wearing starry pajamas, while Amy wore moon-patterned pajamas.

“Why are you guys up?” I asked in confusion.

Amy replied in a hoarse voice, “To get some water.”

Maggie added, “Amy stepped on my stomach, so I have to pee. Grandma made you some chicken.”

“Go back to sleep,” I told them. However, they sat down at the dining table, intending to keep me company while I ate. They asked me a few questions about the song and told me how crazy things were on the internet today.

The song’s music video also had 60 million views in one day. Taylor’s music video almost jumped up 30 million views today, making her views collection almost racing 200 million. The views were slowing down after the first day, but it’s still rising faster than the other music video being released.

‘I think BTS still holds the record in my previous life. 108 million views in one day.’ I thought secretly as I was talking with Amy and Maggie. 

Entertain has started video monetization so I have earned a lot of money today. Entertain videos were basically 2015 era Youtube, with numerous channels popping up daily. Youtube has fallen far behind in technology, video refresh rate, quality, and so on. Many people were migrating to Entertain websites. 

On Youtube, my video views count was less than 10 million as most people opted to watch it on Entertain. 

Around 3 am, when I was lying in bed, I suddenly got a text message from Taylor.

Taylor: Explain the song.

Me: I’m tired. Just got back home from filming.

Taylor: (picture.jpg)

She send me a selfie of her in front of the mirror, wearing a tank top and shorts, sitting cross legged while hiding her face behind the phone.

Taylor: Explain it or I’ll send you another.

Me: (Sleep.emoji)

Taylor: (Picture.jpg)

She pulled her tank upward, revealing her stomach and slight underboobs in the picture. After a long pause, I sent her a reply text.

Me: This isn’t a good idea. 

Taylor: Why? You said in the song that you still want me!

It started an argument between us, and after some long heated discussions, I had to use my rest skill to get some much needed rest before I have to go work at 7 am tomorrow morning.

The exhaustion on my face didn’t fully go away even if I had enough rest for the night. Around 10 a.m when I was preparing to go to the film site, Taylor stomped her way into my office with an angry expression.

“What exactly are you playing at? Are you only using my feelings to make your song trending!?” She accused me.”Is that all I ever was to you!”

With an annoyed expression, I replied in a cold tone, “Didn’t you do the same thing…first?”

Taylor was taken aback, and then tears started pooling in her eyes. “You’re an asshole!” She cursed before she stomped away. I sighed in exasperation and said, “I’m too tired for this.”